Large scale job creation?

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There was a story, some years ago, about a British company which ordered a large quantity of computer chips from a company in Japan. The order specified a fault rate of 2%, meaning that they expected that 98% of the chips delivered would be perfect. When the order arrived, there was a small package containing some of the chips along with a note which advised the customer that the faulty chips had been packed separately so it would be obvious which ones they were. The point of the story, of course, is that the traditional ‘British’ approach to quality control was to put expensive processes in place to identify faulty products, whilst the Japanese approach was to build quality in so that there were no faulty products to identify.

It’s stereotyping (and almost certainly apocryphal), but it resonates. Worse, it seems to underpin some aspects of the current government’s approach to handling the pandemic, and in particular the issue of quarantine. Moving from a ban on all holiday travel to a gradual relaxation could have been a very simple process: all that was required was to keep all existing rules, and publish a list of excepted countries where travel was once more permitted. Those booking holidays would know exactly where they stood, and travel companies could bring enough staff off furlough and enough planes out of their parking zones to run flights to a small number of countries. But why do anything so simple when there is a more complicated approach available? By removing the ban on travel and placing all countries into one of three lists, the government has managed to turn simplicity into absolute confusion. Travel companies believed (reasonably enough) that they had been given the legal go-ahead to run flights to amber list countries and consequently lined up more planes and staff than would otherwise have been the case, and would-be holiday-makers believed that they were being told that they could go as long as they followed the quarantine rules on return. The government has spent much of the time since their announcement trying to explain that that which is legal isn’t really allowed after all.

Not only that, but they’ve been busy expanding the numbers of people employed to check that people are properly quarantining – the Home Secretary told us yesterday that “Significant resources have been put in place – millions of pounds – in terms of the follow-up checking of people around their testing and making sure they stay at home. It has been stepped up”. As job creation projects go, getting more people working to provide travel arrangements which then require the government to employ more people to check up on those who travel is a pretty large scale scheme but, just like the example of those computer chips, it’s about dealing with the consequences of things going wrong rather than preventing them from going wrong in the first place.

The government would probably counter by arguing that trusting people to use their own good sense and do the right thing is better than banning them from doing the wrong thing. In principle, they’re right – social solidarity is a much more cohesive approach than using rigid rules. But social solidarity is based on people identifying with the common good and wanting to work collectively, not on a system of shaming, pursuing, and fining transgressors. And a party which has spent decades preaching – and is still doing so – that greed is good, and that selfishness is the motive which should drive us all is singularly ill-placed to fall back on any sort of appeal to people’s altruism.

Is there a case for the Union? 3: Solidarity

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One of the other arguments often used in support of the continuation of the UK is the idea that the parts of the UK are economically stronger together; that any weakness in some parts can be addressed by fiscal transfers from other parts. In theory, it’s a good argument, based on the concept of social solidarity under which no part of the population should be allowed to fall behind. It’s a point which Wales’ First Minister majored on in an article for the National this week. The weakness of the argument is that it reflects what they want us to believe, rather than what actually happens. Drakeford was reduced to talking about what he believes should happen rather than reflecting the objective reality. If I wanted to use that argument to bolster the union, I wouldn’t start by diverting funds away from Wales and Scotland.

In practice, we have an economy which sucks the lifeblood out of most parts of the UK in order to feed the greed of one small corner. This is nothing new; the difference in wealth levels between London and the South-East on the one hand and most of the rest of the UK on the other isn’t a ‘bug’ of the economic system, it’s an inherent feature. It’s tempting for independentistas to see this as about England on the one hand vs Wales and Scotland on the other, but it isn’t as simple as that. The differences between the regions of England are also enormous, and even within London – nominally the richest part of the UK – there are significant pockets of serious poverty. Inequality is baked into the way in which the UK operates.

Labour tell us that we simply need to replace a Tory government with a Labour one, but decades of experience shows that that makes little difference. This isn’t just about a lack of political will, important though that is. It’s about an economic system which naturally concentrates wealth in the hands of a few based predominantly in one part of the country and which necessarily requires the relative impoverishment of others for its ‘successful’ operation. That isn’t something which can be ‘solved’ by electing a different party in England, it’s a fundamental characteristic of the whole economic system. Even to the limited extent that there is any effort to spread the wealth outwards, there is an accompanying expectation that those left in a relatively impoverished position show their ‘gratitude’ for the crumbs they are given, making it look and feel more like charity than solidarity. If I were looking for a strong argument for the union which would appeal to those currently inclined to support independence, I wouldn’t try and base it on any theoretical concept of social solidarity across the UK, at least not until I’d been able to demonstrate that it actually works in practice.

Solidarity would be more effective than enforced obedience

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The lesson that any normal empathic human would have learned from the Barnard Castle eye-test fiasco is that government messages can be seriously undermined if senior members or officials of the government are seen to be non-compliant with government guidance, even if that non-compliance can potentially be interpreted by some as ‘merely’ stretching a point rather than an outright and undeniable breach. All the evidence shows that Cummings’ jaunt had a serious negative impact on public willingness to comply, and left an unpleasant feeling that there’s one law for ‘them’ and another for everyone else. However, the lesson that Johnson appears to have actually learned is that toughing it out works. Not in terms of such minor questions as reinforcing government messages and protecting lives of course, but in the more limited but much more important – to him, anyway – sense of fending off a potential threat to his own position. To paraphrase an old saying, there are two rules concerning the world king: 1) the world king is always right, and 2) in the event of him being wrong, rule 1 above applies.

There seems to be no doubt that, in the black-and-white matter of what the letter of the law says, taking himself off for a bike ride seven miles from home was not illegal under English lockdown rules (and that’s still true, even if, as seems likely given Downing Street’s apparent reluctance to either confirm or deny it, he and his security entourage drove that seven miles rather than riding it). But there is equally no doubt that, at a time when his own government’s ministers and the health experts are saying that the law is a maximum, not an entitlement, and that people should be avoiding any travel at all unless it is absolutely essential, let alone the continual hints that he and the government believe that current rules may not be strict enough, his trip was directly contrary to most of the messaging coming from himself, let alone those around him. It might be arguable that, for his security (to say nothing of the safety of other road users), having the PM and a posse of security officers riding their bikes in wobbly fashion through the roads of the capital is not the most brilliant idea that anyone ever came up with, and that it was therefore reasonable to use the lack of precision in the law to allow him some safe exercise. With a bit more self-awareness, to say nothing of a willingness to express a degree of contrition or regret, he might have tried that line, and many might even have sympathised. But feelings like contrition are alien to Johnson’s character – and anyway, the world king is always right.

How damaging it will be in the coming weeks and months remains to be seen – the Cummings effect is still strong after many months. One of the strangest aspects of the whole affair was that apparently, in a stark display of his own lack of self-awareness, the PM was so surprised at how many other people were at the park where he went for his ride that he took that information back to the cabinet for a discussion on how the guidance could be more strongly enforced. This, in turn, may well have led to the otherwise inexplicable decision to deploy the disastrous Priti Patel at yesterday’s press conference to promise draconian police action against all those mere plebs who dare to emulate the PM’s lack of compliance with what is mostly guidance rather than law. There is little doubt that stronger enforcement will be popular amongst the overwhelming majority who are attempting to follow the ever-changing rules and guidance and don’t like seeing others ‘getting away with it’. It’s a poor substitute though for encouraging a greater sense of social solidarity where people genuinely feel that the action taken is collective rather than simply individual. Johnson’s words and actions directly undermine such solidarity as does exist rather than increasing it. But then world kings don’t require solidarity, merely obedience.

Solidarity in drowning

Tweet One of the better arguments used by the ‘Better Together’ campaign in Scotland is that many of the problems faced by Scotland aren’t unique to them; they’re problems faced by many other parts of the UK, including Wales.  It’s a good point, but it does rather invite the question which one of the audience raised during the second Salmond-Darling debate – ‘if we’re better together, why aren’t we better now?’

Whilst in principle, the idea that we can more effectively tackle problems collectively using the strength of the whole, is entirely credible, the notion is fatally undermined by the empirical evidence, which is that the problems are simply not being tackled.  Staying together means being bound to an economy which is heavily biased towards the south east; and a mere change of government (Labour’s sub-text to this argument) doesn’t seem to make any difference in practice.

A variation on the argument is that put forward by Douglas Alexander last week, who said:

“The Nationalists peddle a misplaced cultural conceit that holds that everyone south of the Solway Firth is an austerity loving Tory.  Our friends, family and comrades in Wales, Northern Ireland and in great cities like Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester find no place in this notion.”

Leaving aside the gratuitous reference to cultural conceit, the underlying point is a valid one – England is not a homogeneous austerity loving country.  And perhaps nationalists should put up our hands to the occasional over-simplistic reference to ‘England’ as a whole, as though it was homogeneous.  It isn’t – but then neither are Wales and Scotland – and it’s a mistake to pretend that it is.  And there are plenty of supporters of austerity to be found easily enough in Wales and Scotland too.

What is true though is that, aggregated up to a total using the national boundaries within the UK, the English majority are rather more supportive of austerity than are the Welsh and Scottish majorities.  And that is reflected in election results.  It means that parts of the UK opposed to austerity can be, and are, outvoted by its supporters.  Part of the price which any of the UK’s countries or regions pays for remaining part of the union is an acceptance that we will often be outvoted.

But there’s something else in this argument as well, even if not always expressed quite as openly as this – is it right for Scotland to walk away from the problems of Wales, Northern Ireland and Northern England rather than working with them to seek change from which all of them will benefit?  It’s an interesting moral question, but there’s a danger that it ends up being an argument that Scots should not take responsibility for solving their own problems out of solidarity for those elsewhere who cannot or will not do likewise.  It's a bit like arguing that we must all drown together.

In any event – what would give most hope to those other parts of the UK: for Scotland to stay put so that all sink together in comradeship and solidarity, or for Scotland to demonstrate that there is another way?